Despite being the religious majority in
Iraq, Shia Muslims have been killed in large numbers by ISIL. On 12 June 2014, ISIL
killed
at least 1,566 Shia Iraqi Air Force
recruits in the Camp Speicher massacre.[3][4][5]
ISIL has also targeted Shia prisoners.[6]
According to witnesses, after the militant group took the city of Mosul, they divided the Sunni prisoners from the Shia prisoners.[6]
Six hundred fifty Shia prisoners were then taken to another location and executed.[6]
Kurdish officials in Ibril have reported similar incidents where Sunni and Shia prisoners were separated and Shia prisoners were killed.[6]

Amnesty International
has held ISIL responsible for the ethnic cleansing
of ethnic and religious minority groups in northern Iraq on a "historic scale", putting entire communities "at risk of being wiped off the map of Iraq". In a special report released on 2 September 2014, it described how ISIL had "systematically targeted non-Sunni Muslim communities, killing or abducting hundreds, possibly thousands, of individuals and forcing more than tens of thousands of Shias
along with other minorities to flee the areas it has captured since 10 June 2014". the most targeted Shia groups in Nineveh
were ShiaTurkmens
and Shabak, who have lived together for centuries in
Nineveh
province, large parts of which have come under ISIL's control.[7]

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In summer 2014, Shia properties in
Mosul
and other ISIS held areas were painted with the letter ر “R” for Rafidah, a derogatory term used to describe Shias by Sunni Muslims. Houses and shops owned by Shias were confiscated by ISIS and given to local ISIS supporters or foreign fighters.[8]
Hundreds of thousands of Shia Shabaks and Turkmens fled the cities of Mosul,
Tel Afar
as well as neighbouring ShiaShabak
villages in the Nineveh plain.

Thousands of Shias from villages in
Salahudin
and Kirkuk
fled to neighbouring villages in Kirkuk after three Shia
villages were attacked by ISIS and at least 40 civilians including children were killed near the town of Bashir.[8][9]

ISIS views Shia Muslims as polytheists and heretics. Therefore, it started a campaign to destroy all Shia shrines, mosques and places of worship in
Nineveh
and all ISIS-held areas. Reports state that at least 10 Shia
shrines and hussiniyas including historical ones in Mosul
and Tel Afar
were demolished or blown up by ISIS during this campaign.[10]
In July 2016, ISIS attacked a Shia shrine during the Muhammad ibn Ali al-Hadi Mausoleum attack, killing anywhere from 56 to at least 100 people, not including the attackers.

On the 17th of March 2016, United States Secretary of State
John Kerry
declared that the violence initiated by ISIL against Shia Muslims[11][12]
and others in Iraq and Syria amounted to genocide. He said:

Kerry's statement came the same week the
US House
voted 383-0 in favor of classifying the atrocities committed by ISIS as a genocide against certain ethnic and religious minorities in its territories.[11][12][13]